Canadian singer Laurel MacDonald is the queen of the crossover. Having successfully produced a superb album for Nova Scotian folk singer Mary Jane Lamond, she here stakes her own performing career on a high-tech reinterpre... more &raquotation of the work she did for McDonald. This six-song EP is a reworking of one song, "Wing and a Prayer," from her 1999 solo album Chroma, in cooperation with world-music remixers Transglobal Underground, West Coast DJs Mo Funk, "plunderphonics" master John Oswald, dub maker Bill Laswell, and producer Richard Horowitz. Most of these tracks only vary in small ways from the original song, but each has unique sounds that outline MacDonald's voice in ways that make you think folk diva one minute, Laurie Andersen the next. The voice is potent, and the studio manipulations are so subtle, unique, and always in synch with the voice that it works on every track. --Louis Gibson&laquo less

Synopsis

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Canadian singer Laurel MacDonald is the queen of the crossover. Having successfully produced a superb album for Nova Scotian folk singer Mary Jane Lamond, she here stakes her own performing career on a high-tech reinterpretation of the work she did for McDonald. This six-song EP is a reworking of one song, "Wing and a Prayer," from her 1999 solo album Chroma, in cooperation with world-music remixers Transglobal Underground, West Coast DJs Mo Funk, "plunderphonics" master John Oswald, dub maker Bill Laswell, and producer Richard Horowitz. Most of these tracks only vary in small ways from the original song, but each has unique sounds that outline MacDonald's voice in ways that make you think folk diva one minute, Laurie Andersen the next. The voice is potent, and the studio manipulations are so subtle, unique, and always in synch with the voice that it works on every track. --Louis Gibson

CD Reviews

Great work in a crowded genre

John R. Hodgkinson | 01/26/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The source track A Wing And A Prayer, off the Chroma album, is based on an old Celtic divination rhyme (sorrow if you see one crow, joy if two, and so on). Each remix highlights a different aspect of the rhyme - I get Sandman-like images here (though that's no doubt a coincidence). The shuddering drums of Transglobal Underground evoke Destiny, the jazzy brushed snares of Mo Funk do Desire, Richard Horowitz scatters filtered vocal snippets of "whirlin' and spinnin'" to handle Delirium, Bill Laswell's guitar-heavy mix makes me Despair that rock is really truly dead these days, and Plunderphonics' arhythmic, enigmatic ambient washes are Dream himself.

OK, but why does this Celtic thing work? And when will it stop working? Which is to say, how many Celtic-mythic-electronic-worldmusic female singers, however good, can one poor world hold? Even super-talented newcomers like Laurel MacDonald have to stand in a seemingly infinite queue that includes Enya, the various Mouth Music vocalists, Mary Jane Lamond, Sandy Denny, on and on into the mists of antiquity. But they're all singing their hearts out for us, they should all be rewarded."